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Too Little Information

An F.B.I. briefing on Monday was supposed to bolster the agency’s conclusion that a lone, disturbed bioterrorism scientist was responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people, sickened 17 others and terrified the country. It fell short of its goal.

The F.B.I. spent years pointing a finger at a different suspect. It is not enough for the agency to brush off continuing skepticism. “There’s always going to be a spore on a grassy knoll,” Vahid Majidi, the chief of the agency’s weapons of mass destruction division told reporters.

A group of independent experts needs to look hard at the F.B.I.’s technical analysis and detective work that combined to convince investigators that the mailed anthrax must have come from Dr. Bruce Ivins, a scientist at the Army’s bioterrorism lab in Fort Detrick in Maryland.

The core of the F.B.I.’s case, was the use of new microbial forensic techniques to match the mailed anthrax with anthrax that the agency says was prepared by Dr. Ivins and contained in a flask that he controlled. Experts identified four distinct genetic markers among the anthrax spores in the mailings. They analyzed anthrax samples gathered from laboratories around the world. Ultimately, they concluded that only anthrax batches prepared by Dr. Ivins contained all four mutations.

Perhaps 100 other scientists had access to the same anthrax supply, either at Fort Detrick or another institution that had received a shipment from Fort Detrick, according to the F.B.I. briefers. Standard police work eliminated all other suspects and found circumstantial evidence incriminating Dr. Ivins.

None of this circumstantial evidence has been subjected to close outside scrutiny. Congress should be sure to examine it closely. And given the overriding importance of the laboratory work in tracing the anthrax to Dr. Ivins’s batches, it is distressing that the F.B.I. has not released more details from its scientific investigation so that independent experts can evaluate it.

From the available information it looks as if the F.B.I. has pulled off a scientific coup. But at least one bioweapons expert has publicly expressed doubt that Dr. Ivins did it, and many of his Fort Detrick colleagues reportedly feel the same. Now that Dr. Ivins’s suicide has precluded a court trial, there needs to be an independent evaluation of whether the F.B.I. has found the right man. For that, the ever-secretive agency is going to have to share more information.

A version of this editorial appears in print on , on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: Too Little Information. Today's Paper|Subscribe